Pages Not Showing All Fonts

[Luisa Rodocker]

Thisissue (that some fonts seem bolder in the pdf) is caused by some effect. It can be a drop shadow, an inner shadow, a blending mode option or something like that. And it is happening on the texts that are on the blank areas. Right?

Your PDF is still queued, two hours later, but I'd be willing to bet this is a transparency issue. Transparency affects how text is rendered on the screen. It shouldn't affect how it's rendered when printed (although this has also been reported). It's difficult to explain to clients.

The fix I've read about is to put text on a higher layer than the transparent object, but I haven't been able to make this work. Last time I ran into this I put an empty 99% stroke opacity text box on the master page so that every page had this effect. Better bolder on every page than bolder on some pages.

Also, my knowledge of layers is nonexistent. I've never used them so don't like my chances of having to rework a 120 page document separating all of the text onto another layer (plus, this wouldn't work anyway because all of the images need to remain inline so that future alterations to the text will result in the images staying in the correct place in relation to the text).

As Ken said, this is a display issue having to do with how transparency is rendered. That transparency can be in the form of a layered or transparent image, or (since jpegs don't support either of those features) some effect, such as a drop shadow applied in InDesign, which is why adding a transparent item to the master page will work to make all of the text render the same on screen.

Also, the PDF I generate is for electronic viewing only so it is important that I have the text look the same on every page and the bolder text just looks bad, so I don't want to have the bolder text on every page.

Is this confidential? Can you package the file and zip it, then send me a private message (click my name or avatar to go to my profile, then use the actions panel) with a link to a server location? you can use yousendit.com, for example.

Peter - thanks very much for the offer. I will upload the package tomorrow at work (it is about 70MB). I really appreciate this because this problem has plagued me for many months now. I'll PM you when it's uploaded.

Yes, it was unlikely, but in my own experience, if I'm focussed on one thing, I find it very easy to overlook something else very obvious. I can easily imagine myself getting more and more focussed on issues such as transparency, text on uppermost layers, etc., and completely overlooking two "obvious" possibilities:

The Strokes on the text is also a likely candidate - because the Low and Medium Flattner Presets have Convert All Strokes to Outlines. Only the High preset has the Convert All Strokes to Outline turned off.

One more suggestion: My battles with transparency turning text dark (which, as in your case, is critical since my end-product is the online PDF) were resolved when I stopped Exporting to PDF from InDesign and began Printing to PDF.

The file is non-facing pages and most pages do not contain any transparency. On my Windows system the type looks normal on those pages until I switch to Overprint Preview, at which point it gets slightly bolder, an expected behavior that has been around forever.

I've tried exporting and printing to PDF, and the only pages that appear darker to me are the exported pages with unflattened transparency (I cheated for testing by duplicating a page with with an image, then making that image 99% opaque).

I looked at the file history, and I note that it was originally a CS2 document. I'd recommend you export to .inx from CS3 to remove the missing plugins references. It's also a Mac doc, and I'm on Windows. I have some vague memories that this issue behaves differently on the two platforms, and that may in fact be what Chuckee is seeing. I'm inclined to suggest trying an export to PDF/X-1a to see if that helps.

I was going to ask why this wasn't set up as facing pages, but I've just remembered that you said it was going to be distributed as an on-screen PDF, not printed. My personal inclination would still be to make facing pages now to mirror your page borders, and then it would be ready to re-purpose for print when it becomes wildly popular. You can set the file properties in the PDF to open as a two-page spread with single cover page.

In my testing pages with transparency ALWAYS show emboldened type in InDesign, and ALL pages show it if you switch to overprint preview. I think this has to do with the overprint preview engine, which I don't claim to understand.

When I export to PDF using a preset like [Press Quality] with a compatibility of Acrobat 5, which leaves the transparency live, those pages with transparency look darker on screen in the PDF. If I use a setting like PDF/X-1a that flattens transparency (Acrobat 4 compatibility) I don't see the darkening. Printing to PDF instead of exporting also will always flatten transparency.

The downside to flattening transparency is it can lead to other screen artifacts like stitching -- thin white lines around regions in the file -- on screen and in low resolution printing. For your file I don't think that's going to be a major issue as for the most part you don't have transparency on top of other objects.

To get a feel for what you should see, make a two-page file, and set both pages identically. Add a small color filled rectangle somewhere on both pages, and on one set the opacity of the rectangle to 99%. That's enough to make that page show transparency problems, but not to make the object visually different on screen in most cases. Now make a PDF using a variety of settings and printing/exporting. When you view the PDFs, look at the pages separately and jump back and forth. If the type is the same you won't se anything as you shift, if one is bolder it will jump out at you. Jump from flattened to unflattened versions the same way.

Be sure to link back to this thread so they can see what's been discussed already, and post a link here to the new thread so we can find it and subscribe. If they have a solution, I'd LOVE to learn about it (and so would quite a few other peple around here).

I'm pretty sure this is a platform-specific issue, and probably not solvable, at least not by me, and I don't know anyone who isn't likely to already be looking here who would be able to do any better.

Can Chukee post a link to some of the trial PDFs that show the problem that were exported using PDF/X-1a preset and any settings but that were printed rather than exported? Just two pages each, on that shows and one that doesn't (but the same two pages in each file). That will confirm, perhaps the platform connection.

I've downloaded your samples, and I must say this is all very strange. Looked at on my monitor, all of the pages in each document seem to match each other in darkness (which I expected since both are flattened), but the exported sample "seems" slightly darker to me than the printed sample. Combining the two files into one, however, and looking at the same page side by side in the same window, there is virtually no difference in darkness, or perhaps the printed page is slightly darker. This could be due to different settings between the exported and printed versions -- the colors are definitely slightly different.

None of the fonts I've selected through the squarespace editor work. They keep showing up as different sizes of times new roman or something basic. I am trying to use the Gopher font pack, not using any custom font code. Any idea what the issue is?

Have you added any custom code to your site? If you are selecting fonts in the Site Style menu and they are not being reflected in your site, then am wondering if you have code that is taking priority.

that's why i'm confused. I've tried various font packs as well and I'm having the same issue with them all. They won't show up on my live site. I'm wondering if there's some sort of reset I should do. Trying to avoid having to add custom font code

Hi @LouLouHarvey, I ended up opening a case with support and they finally fixed it. No idea what they did, but once it was escalated the fonts started working. Thanks for your help brainstorming solutions!

I am so frustrated, I about to discontinue using BRAVE because I cannot read my webpages! Almost all of them have this problem. I turned off the shields and nothing changed. I reset settings. I turned on and off all kinds of settings. I have no custom fonts installed. Chrome and Safari do not have this issue. I am on MAC OS Big Sur. Any suggestions? I will attach an example image.

@SPG thanks for checking. If not too much trouble, would you mind trying each step below? Try to go in order and only test one at a time. What will be helpful to know is if the issue persists or goes away in each step.

We have a CMS website in Fuji which is made public. All content pages are public, could be accessed without login. Everything works well until we added custom fonts to public CMS pages. Custom fonts worked well as long as site is private. But when we made site as public, we are getting browsers popping up 'login' dialogue boxes up on visiting every page. Our custom fonts are uploaded to site and added to download using CSS. This making browser to open a login dialog box. Clicking cancel on login dialog three times hides the login prompt on that page. Same repeats on every page click.

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